THE ELF LAUGHED, high and happy, and walked along a curve around Mia's splattered form—now he took care not to trod on her.

Shea watched him come; his Master's eyes never left him.

Shea struggled for air. He was not prepared for Telor to be so close, or so tall.

It was as if the elf grew a little more with each moment that passed.

Shea had not stood since Telor first ordered him down onto his knees, which were raw with dull pain after so long a time in that position. He imagined that his mind must have played tricks—and Telor was so naturally lofty and lithe besides—for he stared ahead at the elf's thighs, and not at his waist, as the youth thought he should.

A disoriented sense of scale nagged Shea.

But Telor pushed his long, thick fingers into Shea's hair and ruffled the soft brown threads like the fur coat of a beloved pet, and Shea was lost. A moan poured from Telor's elegant neck and lovely mouth: deep honey; Shea whimpered at the heavenly sound, and pushed his face forward into Telor's thighs.

Beneath his clothes the elf's flesh was firm and warm—so full of rich vitality, and finely muscled—and the material of his pants was the softest of any garment that Shea had ever felt. He nuzzled his cheek against his Master's leg and purred.

The young human was overwhelmed. His lips parted as if he might say something.

Telor tapped softly at the back of Shea's head; Shea closed his mouth.

The suggestion was the only hint that the longing servant required. Shea lowered himself and prostrated on his hands and knees before Telor, and he kissed the lengthy tops of the elf's bare feet. His nostrils caught their sweet salt, as well as something else—an iron tang; blood. 

Inside the tent's sultry atmosphere, Mia's sighing death was a softer tune than the dying fire's hushed crackle. For the first moment in a lengthy stretch of time, the sounds of Shea's forest home reached him once again.

There were the psychotic shrieks of the long-tailed parrots that called to one another in the early evening. Droplets rapped on the marquee's roof—the rain had died, but would pick up soon enough, Shea knew. Nearby, even, as Shea lowered his lips to the tops of Telor's deadly, beautiful feet, over and over, a doe grunted caution to its calves.

A simple sigh from Telor shattered Shea's attention on anything else, but it was a pleased and relaxed sound. Shea did not cease his kisses along the tops of Telor's feet until they eventually moved, and slid out of reach of his eager lips.

Shea sat up to find that Telor gracefully turned before him, and that the elf bent one leg at the knee so that his foot rose as he spun.

With one languid movement, Telor pinned Shea to the tent pole at his back.

The elf's warm, grubby sole pressed against the human's bare chest—Telor's powerful and steady pulse, the blood-beat of the man's heart, drummed on Shea's trunk, and thumped in time with his own heart.

Shea glanced down to find that his shirt drooped awkwardly from his shoulders. The garment's neckline sagged, almost at the line of his navel.

Telor's sole, too, struck the youth as so imposingly large and heavy that no amount of squirming would budge the weight of his Master from him.

The realization that he was snared and could not escape Telor in that moment flooded Shea's already overloaded mind with excitement and fear—the dueling sensations roiled inside of him, oil and water; they sloshed like the waves of a thrashing tempest.

It was a taste of Mia's savage demise.

"I love the look of her," Telor said as he held his pose. "She's my new favorite rug."

His form loomed over Shea. The human quaked, enveloped, trapped behind the elf's long legs, and rooted by the firm press of Telor's lethal sole.

And Shea could spy what remained of his mother from between Telor's legs.

Her body, spread out and thinned, was truly like a grotesque carpet, but made with chunks and paste, instead of fibers.

Her head—all that was whole of her, besides her useless heart—was turned on its side. She faced her killer, and her betrayer. Still and pale, drained of its blood, there was an undeniable light in her eyes yet, dull as it was.

Life. As it teetered over death's invisible void.

The pressure which held Shea in place lessened as Telor cast off from the young man's body. Shea winced from how the motion had compressed his chest, and wondered if he might bruise—Telor radiated power; his height seemed oddly grand. The tall elf sauntered over to where Mia's head lay and Shea watched him go, choked by anticipation, hands on his knees—those knees stung viciously, having had no relief since the gory display had started.

The warm imprint of Telor's sole lingered on Shea's chest—the exact shape of it, and all of the precise curves where the elf's toes had touched him.

How Shea wished that spectral presence would never fade.

He wanted to wear the sensation of Telor's large stamp on him, like a brand.

He hoped that spot would bruise and capture a relief of Telor's sole.

Mia's brown eyes—so glazed that they appeared gray—tracked Telor's advance and flickered between his two feet as they approached. The woman's lids and lips slowly stretched to display her worry. Her head shook a little as it strained to take in her butcher's return, powered by what orphaned muscle remained in her neck. If it could have, Shea mused, Mia's head would have wriggled away like a worm.

Her heart was in Telor's path, and the elf's foot stomped down and squished the organ as if he did not even see it. There was not any blood; that heart had no more blood to give. 

Afterward, with a haughty laugh, Telor stepped onto her head as he passed over, like Mia's skull was simply the next stone in the sequence of a river crossing.

Joy twisted inside of Shea; he noted how Mia's face could still move and show pain as Telor had wickedly trod onto her. The elf swung right around, and stepped onto and over Mia's head as her face contorted—comically, to Shea. There was something cartoonish about her drained features. It was absurd that she was even still alive. How Telor toyed with her sent Shea into a fit of giggles he could not contain.

Telor's handsome face turned toward his slave, and the warm grin that blossomed there gleamed like a trophy to Shea.

Telor paused then, and frowned down at Mia's head.

He planted his foot on top of her skull as one might to stop a ball from rolling, and left his sole on her as he appeared to think. The elf irreverently smeared his flesh all over Mia's head as he pondered—smooshed her scrunched-up features even more. Her pale flesh grew pink from the thin coating of her own blood that Telor's sole was brushed with.

There sounded a clap! clap! clap! as Telor rapidly lifted and lowered his foot. He smacked at Mia's cheek with his sole. She winced, braced against his buffeting slaps, but Telor did not stop. His blows did slow, but only so he could clap his sole onto her harder, and harder, and harder.

More and more: Slap. Slap! Stomp! Stomp!

With each hard impact, Shea expected Mia's face would buckle.

It quickly did.

Telor pushed his heel down through the woman's cheek, which caved in her cheek's curve and skewed her jaw. Even after that, Telor stomped, without remorse or hesitation—a staccato of pops told how many of Mia's teeth were dislodged by the blow. She spit them out in a bloody mess, and Shea cackled and cheered at the show.

Telor chuckled, and used his foot to turn Mia's injured head with an incongruous amount of care.

Mia's faded gray-brown eyes cast one last flat look at Shea before she was forced to gaze at the elf who towered above her.

Telor's hands returned to his hips. There was that insufferably smug grin on his lovely face. His leg shifted; his foot lifted over her. She could only stare upward: his malevolent smile, his crimson sole.

The elf lowered his foot and simply let it rest atop Mia's upturned face.

He cast a sidelong glance at his slave—inclined his head upward and spoke gently, like a teacher to a student.

"Watch carefully, pet," Telor said in a tone that admonished. "Don't blink, now."

Shea had gazed with awe and lust at his Master; with hungry eyes the youth stared then at Mia's head as commanded, and he did not blink.

Telor's large foot was so long that his heel and his toes spilled over Mia's chin and forehead. Her face was smothered into his plush flesh; it disappeared.

Conflicted jealousy seized Shea as his Master rubbed his sole back and forth on the woman's face. How he wanted to be under it, instead. He did not yearn to be destroyed like her, no—yet he could not deny that the thought was exciting. Shea's lungs became as useless as Mia's as he fantasized about Telor's violence; he forced air in and out of himself with conscious effort.

Telor loomed like a giant over Mia's small, fragile head. The golden man, in his wonderfully gay attire. He wagged his raised foot slowly, tauntingly. Mia's expression toggled between the immeasurable hurt she had suffered through already, and fearful anticipation of the pain about to be inflicted upon what remained of her.

Her bloodless lips worked, just barely, as if she might say something.

Even after all this, Shea wondered, would she beg for his Master's mercy?

Ha! But there had been none all along, not even for a moment.

Would she beg for Telor to end her?

"Time to die," the elf declared; his voice had dropped into that rich brassy timbre.

Shea licked at his lips.

Stomp!

Telor's foot had plunged, with force, with finality, and pressed on Mia's head. He kept it there, and continued to add pressure. Shea was sure that Mia's skull would collapse. When it did not, Telor's foot soared up into the air.

Stomp! Stomp!

With a loud pair of gruesome snaps, Mia's head visibly flattened beneath Telor's attacking sole. Her features crumpled, her face skewed there, and distended here. Shea watched, hungry for every detail: she was no longer recognizable as his mother, or anyone he had ever seen, the way her puffy face sagged, misshapen.

Stomp! Stomp! Splat!

Each blow elicited its own report of cracking bone. Mia's head was no longer round in shape. It was a beaten-in, lumpy ball. In the ruined mass of her face, Shea spied one of her eyes. It moved still. The pupil and iris on the little white ball swam around.

Shea tried to imagine what his mother might have thought—how Telor appeared from her perspective. Did she welcome death? Did she hate her son? Perhaps she was well beyond such inklings. Perhaps she did not think at all.

The elf continued to stomp on her head without a care.

Until finally: his foot rested on Mia's mashed face once more, and once more applied pressure.

This time, Telor was able to push his sole through Mia's weakened skull, all the way to the floor.

It was a stunning, surprising end, and Shea was careful to catalog every detail.

The boy did not blink.

Mia's flesh deflated as her cranium shattered, and the woman's glistening brains oozed out from under the conquering foot; the matter splattered outward from beneath the elf's toes. At the same time, her jaw buckled under Telor's heel and cracked in twain, and the sharp wings of her mandibles slashed through the flesh at her cheeks.

Telor chuckled with cruel delight as he utterly obliterated what was left of Mia's head: he employed both of his feet, marched in place.

So Mia's head joined the rest of her disintegrated morass. Telor's soles pounded her cranial remains thin before he eventually—reluctantly, even—stepped off from the pounded disc.

Telor turned to survey his work, and glanced over at his pet—as ordered, the kneeling human gazed over the sight of his crushed mother. Still Shea did not blink. His eyes were wide, and red, and full of tears, and there was that wild grin that haunted his mouth from the moment the carnage began.

"Oh look, slave," Telor remarked, and he pointed. "You can still make out her face, there. Can't you?"

Sure enough, when Shea studied where his Master indicated, Mia's features had flattened into a still mask: her horribly warped face wore an indistinct expression.

Maybe it was agony. Or sorrow. Relief to be dead.

Still and cold. Covered by blood, yet bloodless.

Shea felt nothing right or justifiable as he gazed at Mia's face and the rest of her bodily ruin.

There was pride in him. Elation. Lust.

His disobedient eyes flicked toward Telor's nearby feet. He admired the instrument of Mia's demise.

Telor whistled softly, and Shea's eyes bobbed upward.

The elf grinned widely, sauntered toward his stooped pet. Outside, the misty hush had developed into a rain that softly drummed. The sweetness of the world beyond reached Shea's nose; inside, the tent's atmosphere was marked by fire smoke, cooked meat—and reeked of iron, raw meat. The fire danced and jumped as it sipped from each gust of the wind that managed to swirl into the interior, and filled the air behind Telor's gorgeous, drunken leer with a backdrop of flaming chaos.

"Now it's just us, my oh-so-good, darling, docile little toy."

Shea was slack-jawed and full of wonder. He stared upward at Telor as the elf approached.

Up and up.

As the elf glided nearer, it was as if he also grew. Telor's handsome, angular face—its beautiful, arched details that Shea wanted to keep in his vision and thoughts, always; eyes, turned away from the firelight, that were as dark as sea depths; those thin lips; long, straight hair combed back, pulled into an intricate braid that spilled over the curve of Telor's shoulder—that lovely face tilted lower and lower to track Shea as the elf loomed like never before.

A fearful instinct directed Shea's vision straight ahead of him.

His sight was level with Telor's knees.

Shea's grin faltered.

Something was not right.

Something was very wrong.

There was no mistaking it: Telor had grown larger. The elf continued to. With each passing moment, he became the giant he had appeared to be.

No, Telor did not grow; Shea shrank.

The tent, Shea noticed just then, also yawned more cavernous to the young man. What should have been a low fire in the center of the room was a blaze, and it popped and crackled.

The youth recalled the press of Telor's foot on him as it had pinned him against the tent pole. How much it had hurt. There had been no hope of escape from the elf then, and now Telor was only more powerful compared to Shea. Dread of that captivity welled up anew—of being in a position where Shea could not stop the elf.

What would Telor do to him? He was full of fear as he imagined himself splattered like Mia.

It was awful, too, how all of these thoughts that scared Shea also excited him so.

Shea's body tightened; conflict ruled his mind. It was all too much.

Fight, be free, his spirit demanded.

Still, another side of him urged him to be quiet: be obedient.

"Master," Shea began, and stopped. He could not find the words.

What happened to him? To his body? His size?

The powder, Shea ruminated—perhaps whatever Telor had blown onto Mia had also affected Shea. There was no denying that he dwindled, and continued to, as his clothes bunched up around his diminished frame.

Mia.

The name caught in Shea's mind.

Inside his head, his voice said his mother's name.

Her voice: "Shea."

He would never hear that singular sound thereafter.

Gold flecks glittered in Telor's dark gaze.

"Quiet, pet," the elf murmured through grinning lips. His eyes studied Shea's; his expression was warped with curiosity.

Oh gods, Shea thought. Mother!

The boy's mind melted into kaleidoscopic ruin. How he wished he could rewind time and have Mia back. To live with her as he always had in their cabin, in their woods. The woods! The rain, and the creatures, and the sighing leaves high above the tall, tall trees themselves—all of it called to him. This tent, its violence, his mother's demise—none of it could be real. He was in a dream. Telor was a nightmarish apparition. Shea was sure of it.

He was still asleep on the ledge of his room's window—he must be!

Shea could leave this dreamspace and return to his wood, and everything would be okay. Mia would be there, and Shea would have never met Telor. It was time to wake up, Shea's mind-voice urged.

"Oh, toy."

He could do it. He could wake up. Keep thinking it, the soothing whisper advised. Just focus on how much you want to wake up right here, right now.

"Toy, toy, toy."

Shea clenched his eyelids together so hard that they tingled.

The elf laughed, and Shea opened his eyes.

Telor was only another step away.

Shea yelped, and leapt to his feet.

He almost fell back over. The world was magnified. Everything was disturbingly large—Telor most of all.

Though he stood, Shea's eyes were level with Telor's navel rather than the man's graceful neck. As he gazed and gawped, Shea saw Telor as Mia probably did, in the end: as a powerful titan.

Telor's eyelids widened at Shea's precipitous rebellion. For a brief moment, Shea noticed something he could have never imagined on the elf's face: surprise. But, quickly, the expression faded as renewed delight took hold.

"Master, I'm smaller!"

Telor's vicious expression said it first. "Yes, I know."